Monday, October 29, 2012

President Obama is Jimmy Carter

The results have made clear how poorly we Westerners conduct ourselves on the global stage, and how the news media self-inflicts some of those wounds. At the heart of the drama stands a President of the US, who plays win-win checkers against enemies who play I-win-you-lose three-dimensional chess; and at the same time a Western news media which rushes to publish as news, the poisoned meat of lethal narratives.
. . . .
The major problem concerns how we interpret Arab Muslim political culture. Our view of the “Arab Spring,” was shot through with a kind of messianic hope that our fondest beliefs – people are the same everywhere – were now proven by these “brave facebook protesters” who would bring “democracy” to the good people of Egypt. Now that Egyptians had “lost their fear of the government,” – what CNN and BBC commentators emphasized repeatedly during the dramatic street demonstrations – they would choose democracy. We anticipated a huge victory for progressive forces on the planet.
And because we present ourselves as a gentle giant, which has renounced power for positive-sum relations – we just want to be your friends, we tell the Muslim world – we renounce the kinds of everyday violence necessary for “maintaining order” in pre-modern, alpha-male-dominated, political cultures. So our embassy guards are given unloaded guns, to ceremoniously maintain a façade of modern civility amidst people we refuse to believe are hostile. The guards’ “rules of engagement,” and now, since “Arab Spring,” Arab governments’ rules of engagement, systematically restrain the use of force. We cannot defend ourselves on the ground in a hostile political culture, nor can we retaliate for losses.
Of course, it is all dreadfully mistaken, and the worst scenarios of the Cassandras are now coming to fruition across North Africa and beyond, even as we are radically unprepared to deal with these developments. And yet, in order to maintain our pleasant progressive fantasy, we ignored all the evidence – of misogyny, of anti-Semitism, of anti-Americanism, of brutal religious zealotry in the “revolutionary” Arab street. And now, on the basis of a ludicrous film, they riot and threaten violence for the sake of their honor – all behavior no self-respecting progressive would tolerate for his own people.
We were and are in part able to carry off this astonishing act of denial, to self-inflict this debilitating wound, by adopting as a firm principle: there are no significant cultural differences. All cultures are equal, and one cannot “judge” another culture, or its religion. As Saïd insisted, the most terrible sin a (Western) progressive can make is to invidiously “other” another culture. If they behave like “enfant terribles,” then we’ll apologize for upsetting them in the hopes of calming them down.
While this may be a fine way to proceed with “others” of good will, its dogmatic assertion in 21st- century international relations, has forced us to ignore major hostile cultural forces which have come to the fore in the 15th century AH (1979-2076). Driven by both religious and honor-shame dynamics, Islam has produced a deeply toxic brew of tribal warrior psychosis and millennial cult of death and murder. And yet we, as our President and his top officials insists, should not discuss “radical Islam” lest we insult Muslims. Then we get slapped in the face on the global stage by the very Islamists we don’t talk about.
What should we expect? Our POTUS, in order to “live up” to our democratic principles and oppose dictatorship, threw America’s most reliable Muslim friend in the Middle East, the anchor of our decades-long policy in a volatile region, to the mobs bent on his public humiliation. And rather than pay attention to the fascist theocratic forces at work here, we either ignored the Muslim Brotherhood, or, when they scored huge electoral victories, we redefined them – astoundingly – as basically secular and moderate. We not only played “sour grapes” with our hopes of democracy, we ate the bitter grapes of our enemy’s victory, and claimed they tasted okay.
In the world of honor and shame where most people live, we Americans, Westerners, progressives, come off as fools. We, on the other hand, consider those juvenile games beneath us, deny they have importance. Yes, it’s true that the embassies were attacked, that the attacks continue to spread and intensify, but let’s not exaggerate the damage to our position and let’s not make things worse by retaliating. “Mursi may not be our ally, but we don’t consider him our enemy,” Obama gaudgingly admits in a brief semi-nod to reality. (What firm evidence supports the second assertion?) Obama’s concern for “saving face” apparently lies with his standing among the American people, not in the world in which his “face” is ours. Indeed, the only people he has not apologized to so far, are the American people, his people. Phaeton in his father’s chariot, insisting he has not lost control.
And the most terrible thing is, Obama lost face not only in the eyes of foes so deadly even he will admit they’re “the enemy,” but also to bystanders.
. . . .
If this were merely a war of words, it might not be so bad, but the purpose of their war or words is to better position to strike on the battlefield. This is not a war we who treasure freedom can afford to lose.

Monday, October 22, 2012

On Inheriting A Mess

Obama hasn't gotten us into this mess, which is the worst recession since the 1930's, and based on the fact that much of the collapse revolved around lack of regulation in the housing loan business, there's no quick fix. Once people started losing their homes, it has a domino effect. George W. Bush is the one who got us into two wars, gave tax cuts, and added medicare benefits without EVER including them in his budget. Obama got the hand he was dealt. And I can tell you that the Republicans have done absolutely EVERYTHING they can to stop every effort he makes to get the economy back on track.

Just curious, how would you respond to this?"
Read the comments for some excellent responses, but my favorite is from Kyla:

Just laugh and say, 'If Obama was to get re-elected, just imagine the mess he'd inherit this time!"

A Different Take on Pussy Riot

Interesting Juxtaposition re: Demographics and Darwin

What is old is new again - shades of the 60's generation:

"This soaring anthem cries out to the glory of youth, to the wild-haired freedom of being twenty-something, to everything we take for granted in our college days that evaporates once we trade in our late-night adventures for early-morning conference calls. It's the marching beat for a generation of kids in tight jeans, ironic tees, and flat-ironed hair who're on a mission to make mischief not mayhem, art not resumes, and love not families." (emphasis added)

Friday, August 10, 2012

Better Europe Than California?

But he and his supporters should drop the argument that if we don't change our ways we'll wind up like Europe. That's a mistake because Americans like Europe, and in some complicated ways wouldn't mind being a little more like it. In the past 40 years jumbo jets, reduced fares and rising affluence allowed a lot of Americans, especially the sort who vote, to go there. The great capitals of Europe are glamorous, elegant and old, the outlands are exquisite. What remains of the old Catholic European ethic that business isn't everything, life is everything and it's a sin not to enjoy it, still has a lure. Americans sometimes think of it as they eat their grim salads and drink from their plastic water bottles.
When Americans go to Europe they see everything but the taxes. The taxes are terrible. But that's Europe's business and they'll have to figure it out. Yes what happens there has implications for us but still, they're there and we're here.
What Americans are worried about, take as a warning sign, and are heavily invested in is California—that mythic place where Sutter struck gold, where the movies were invented, where the geniuses of the Internet age planted their flag, built their campuses, changed our world.
We care about California. We read every day of the bankruptcies, the reduced city services, the businesses fleeing. California is going down. How amazing is it that this is happening in the middle of a presidential campaign and our candidates aren't even talking about it?
Mitt Romney should speak about the states that work and the states that don't, why they work and why they don't, and how we have to take the ways that work and apply them nationally.
Barack Obama can't talk about these things. You can't question the blue-state model when your whole campaign promises more blue-state thinking.

Monday, August 06, 2012

A History of Home Foreclosure in Ramsey County

The first wave was froth and had the economy rebounded, that would have ended it. The second wave was fat – people who shouldn’t have had loans anyway – but the third wave is the muscle and bone of the economy. These are prudent borrowers who raised families in their homes and now have lost their life’s savings. That’s going to have a lasting impact on our economy far beyond this election.

Sunday, August 05, 2012

The British Discuss Sports and Education

Lord Moynihan said that about 50 per cent of the medals won by Team GB in Beijing in 2008 were secured by athletes educated in the independent sector, who made up just seven per cent of the population.
He described it as “one of the worst statistics in British sport”, and said all Olympic sports should seek to be more like football, where the proportion of privately-educated players was seven per cent, mirroring society as a whole.

A translation is in order, because we are "a people divided by a common language": (GB) "Public School" = (USA) "Private School"
Follow the discussion in the comments.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Well, Where Are My D%#n Keys Then?

I found this under the street light over at First Things.
But as E. A. Burtt noted over half a century ago in his classic book The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, the thinker who claims to eschew philosophy in favor of science is constantly tempted “to make a metaphysics out of his method,” trying to define reality as what his preferred techniques can measure rather than letting reality dictate what techniques are appropriate for studying it. He is like the drunk who thinks his car keys must be under the lamppost because that is the only place there is light to look for them—and who refuses to listen to those who have already found them elsewhere.
Making something out of nothing remains a fundamental problem.